Poisoned Water, Government
Response, and Race
Black Families Still Must Wait Longer for Protection by Robert D.
Bullard
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 31, 2006

A
recent New York Times article, “Texas
Lawsuit Includes a Mix of Race and Water,” detailed what many
environmental justice advocates have known for decades. Namely, there is
a clear racial divide in the way government responds to
emergencies-toxic contamination, industrial accidents, and natural and
man-made disasters-affecting blacks and whites. Long before
Hurricane Katrina created the worst environmental disaster in
U.S. history and the
levee breach drowned New Orleans nearly a year ago, millions
of African Americans from West Harlem to South Central Los Angeles
learned the hard way that waiting for government to respond can be
hazardous to their health and the health of their community.

This sad state of unequal environmental
protection is typified in two small black communities in East Texas and
in Middle Tennessee. The first case involves Frank and Earnestene
Roberson and their relatives who live on County Road 329 in a
historically black enclave in the oilfields of
DeBerry, Texas. The Roberson family is the descendants of a
black settler, George Adams, who bought 40 acres and a mule there in
1911. In the 1920s oil was discovered in the area, and DeBerry enjoyed a
brief boom.

The family's wells were poisoned by a deep
injection well for saltwater wastes from drilling operations that began
around 1980. The Roberson family first complained to the Texas Railroad
Commission back in 1987 -- the same year the United Church of Christ
Commission for Racial Justice published its groundbreaking “Toxic
Waste and Race in the United States” study-but to no avail.

Nearly a decade later, in 1996, the
railroad commission took samples and found "no contamination in the
Robersons' household supply water that can be attributed to oilfield
sources." This is tantamount to saying: "Black folks, your wells may be
poisoned but the state can't prove the poison came from the oilfield
injection wells." Because of the contamination, the family had to drive
23 miles to a Wal-Mart near Shreveport for clean water.

In 2003, the railroad commission tests
found benzene, barium, arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in the wells
at concentrations exceeding primary drinking water standards. Still, no
government cleanup actions were taken to protect the Robersons and other
black families in the community. In June 2006, the Roberson family filed
suit in federal court, accusing the Texas Railroad Commission, which
regulates the state's oil and gas industry, of failing to enforce safety
regulations and of "intentionally giving citizens false information
based on their race and economic status."

The Robersons point to the slow government
response to the toxic contamination in their mostly black community and
the rapid clean-up response last summer by the railroad commission in
Manvel, a largely white suburb of Houston. One need not be a NASA
scientist to see this racial disparity in black and white.

The lethargic government response in
DeBerry is no aberration. Unfortunately, the Texas case mirrors the slow
government response to toxic contamination in another mostly black
enclave on Eno Road in
Dickson, Tennessee -- a small town located about 35 miles
west of Nashville. The sad events in Dickson are chronicled in
Toxic Terror in a Tennessee Town and
Deadly Tennessee Two Step.

Harry Holt and his family have owned over
150 acres of land in Dickson County’s segregated African American Eno
Road community for more than six generations. The Holt family wells were
poisoned by the leaky Dickson County Landfill-located just 54 feet from
their property line. The landfill accepted tons of toxic industrial
wastes in the late 1960s.

Government officials
first learned of the trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination in the Holt
family wells as far back as 1988 but assured the black family their
wells were safe. TCE is a suspected carcinogen. The wells were not safe.
Three generations of Holts are now sick after being poisoned by their
own government.

Contamination was found in a white
family's spring in 1993 and the county dug the family a new well. Local
government officials later placed the white family on the city water
system after tests showed contamination in the family’s new county-dug
well. No such actions were taken to protect the Holt family. It was not
until 2000 that the Holt family was placed on the city tap water
system-after drinking TCE-contaminated water for twelve years -- from
1988 to 2000. In 2003, the Holt family sued the city, county, and the
company that dumped the TCE in the county landfill. The case is still
pending.

In DeBerry and in Dickson, black families
see their health compromised and their homesteads-land acquired during
the height of Jim Crow segregation-poisoned and devalued by industrial
pollution while the government does absolutely nothing.

Black families in Texas and in Tennessee
were allowed to drink poisoned water from their wells long after
government tests detected industrial contamination. The million-dollar
question is why? Clearly, some Americans just “don’t have the complexion
for protection.”

All levels of government failed to provide
equal environmental and health protection of these black families as
required under the U.S. Constitution. African Americans, like other
Americans, should not have to wait for dead bodies to line their streets
to get government officials to respond swiftly and fairly to
environmental health threats and to man-made disasters.